Artist—Harmonious Thelonious
Album—Listen
Producer Stefan Schwander, aka Harmonious Thelonius describes his current project as “American minimalism vs. African drumming vs. European sequencing,” which is something that takes a minute to wrap your head around. American minimalism might conjure a few different things, but here it generally seems to imply something simple, melodic, easy to listen to. African drumming and European sequencing are more straight forward, but what does it mean coming from a German artist exactly? Whatever you want to call it, it is a unique and interesting mix that has given Schwander enough inspiration for two albums in two years under the Thelonius moniker.
Yet Listen and its predecessor Talking are as distinct as they are similar, with the latter album asserting sonic clarity, and the former, a patchwork of live tracks and studio tracks, demonstrating a uniform roughness. (more…)
